On Tue, 17 Jan 1995, my original posting read:
> Our SPARCserver 1000 (running "Kernel version: SunOS 5.3 Generic
> 101318-42 April 1994", though I wouldn't think that would matter)
> insists on trying to boot off the net when it reboots. The prom
> settings look right to me:
>
> diag-switch?=false
> boot-device=disk
>
> but the only way I can get it to boot off its local disk is by
> typing "boot disk" at the prom monitor.
>
> Can anyone tell me what I'm missing? Is this something I'd know
> about if I were able to keep up in my reading of this list? :-)
First prize goes to Hans-Joerg Leodolter <j_leodolter@ams.co.at>
and Susan Menig <Susan.M.Menig@bell-atl.com> who both had the
solution to our particular problem: the key switch on the front of
the box was in the diagnostic position. (Geez, am I embarrassed.)
Fixing that problem uncovered another: our "boot-file" was wrong.
It seems "boot-file" is not used in diagnostic mode, so typing
"boot disk" at the prom prompt uses the default, and boots without
problem. When we switched to normal mode, our bad boot-file caused
the boot to fail. BTW, the correct value for boot-file (for us, and
I assume all standard Solaris 2 machines) is "/kernel/unix". Special
thanks to richard.johnson@rdatasys.com who not not only looked up
things in the OpenBoot manual, but phoned in addition to emailing.
(Oh, okay -- he's a friend of mine, so I guess it's not really that
special :-) The OpenBoot manual, by the way, is an after-market
product, not standard documentation, but it sounds like it might be
worth getting.
Several people mentioned running into my original problem; the most
frequent workaround was to set "diag-device" to "disk". (I wanted
to avoid that because we sometimes use diag booting when local disks
fail, but others may find this useful.)
Other things mentioned were:
- run the OpenBoot prom "reset" command after changing settings
in the prom
- make sure "mfg-switch?" (as well as "diag-switch?") is set to
false, and that "auto-boot?" is true
- check "use-nvramrc?"; if it's true, check the value of
"nvramrc" (and consider turning off "use-nvramrc?" during testing)
- check for typos (especially spaces) in the "boot-device" value
Thanks again to all who made sun-managers such a wonderful resource:
Marc Jolly - Uniq Professional Services <marcj@uniq.com.au>
Ron Spillane <spillar@agric.nsw.gov.au>
Syed Zaeem Hosain <szh@zcon.com>
Serkan Cil <cil@bilkent.edu.tr>
Peter Samuel <Peter.Samuel@nms.otc.com.au>
Ray Brownrigg <Ray.Brownrigg@isor.vuw.ac.nz>
Mike Bennett <mikebe@pass.bt.co.uk>
Hans-Joerg Leodolter <jle@soft03.ams.co.at>
Bart Janssens - Sun Belgium/CS <Bart.Janssens@belgium.sun.com>
Susan Menig <Susan.M.Menig@bell-atl.com>
"Michael (M.A.) Meystel" <MEYSTMA@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu>
"Paul E. Silun" <paul@polaris1.com>
richard.johnson@rdatasys.com
Herbert 't Hoen <hth@unique.nl>
Robert Tag <tag@mls.saic.com>
--------
David Harnick-Shapiro Support Group, Department of david@ics.uci.edu
Information and Computer Science ucbvax!ucivax!david
University of California, Irvine
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